Space Engineer over Equestria

“Testing, testing, one, two, three. This is Haggen’s Point Station calling the SS Foul Play.” Fade leaned back in satisfaction as the proper frequency came through loud and clear. His job was done for now.

Fade leaned back in his chair, sweat rolling across the black hair of his brow. There had been way too much junk comm traffic. Stupid civilians and their lax life.

“Haggen’s Point, this is the Captain of the SS Foul Play, confirm credit transfer and authorization code.”

“Credits confirmed, code is five, seven, alpha, zeta, epsilon, eight. Confirm.” The captain looked down at worried. Something was off.

Fade felt a small gulp travel down his throat as he leaned back into the commstation console. His fingers were a light near white tone, but hinted at ancient latino blood under the right light. With a few flicks of his finger he had the proper codes up. Everything looked right, but… not.

“Sir, It correlates with the codes in our database, but something is wrong.” Where his skin only hinted at it, his voice revealed a bit more about his heritage. Just a hint of Irish and German.

“Explain.” Fade turned back to the comms and tried to find just what was wrong, but the more he looked, the more everything seemed wrong. Except, if everything was wrong, then… Fade felt a desperate drive to find the source… the source…

The comm trash, what if it wasn’t all trash? Fade felt his heart racing as he traced back over the messages, looking for any trojan horses, any trash that wasn’t trash.

Pente! Four files, all with hacking software. He smiled as he recovered the original files.

“Sir, the plethora of commmercial spam was a ruse to cover a few Trojan Horses. I’ve recovered the real files, their codes are faulty.” Fade let out a breath of relief.

“Battle Stations! All gunsmen to their stations.” Fade smiled as his job ended for the moment. He activated a direct radio to the station for the Captain. All he had to do was…

Fade froze as he found a message that was almost… dream like. It was one for him. Not the crew, not the ship, him. From Alex.

“Fade, help.” Fuck. Fade felt all of his muscles tense up and his heart drop. Alex was calling, for him.

He replayed the file becoming more certain that Alex’s voice was changed, softer. That shouldn’t have been possible, they should have all been dead. Every single last one of those sick fucks. Those nanites were supposed to be flushed from Alex’s system.

At least, that’s what Alex had told him. Alex, who had always been the on to be open with what was wrong.

Surely he hadn’t lied about the nanites, but if that was true then it had to be the cultists.

Neither was great. Alex needed help. He needed him.

Fade considered ignoring this, leaving it in the trash. He had a secure job, a good paying job with a crew that was consistently clean. If he left this, he had no idea what was going to happen. Everything would be uncertain again.

No, he had to go. It would be insane to ask for leave now. He would ask at the next port. Fade just hoped that would be soon enough. Clean or no, space was no kind place to deserters.